Milton Friedman advocated for litemid government in economic and social planning. Why do you need a "thug" state to impose litemid government? Isn't that contradictory?The right wing hates democracy. Check Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter." People generally aren't selfish and cruel, like Ayn Rand thinks they should be. Starving elderly people often receive empathy from most people. This might sound strange to the right wingers here, but a lot of people want a system in place that prevents that kind of thing, and right now Social Security and other welfare state measures seem to be the only feasible way. Yeah, I don't expect to get as much out of SS as I would get if I saved it myself and earned interest. But that's OK. I like that people on disability get help, or that elderly people that maybe got laid off a little early and had their savings wiped out are able to get a meal.For Bryan Caplan this can only mean that me and people like me are irrational. Rational people are selfish. Most people aren't rational, worshiping at the alter of property rights. They keep trying to have their voices heard. So if you are committed to a cruel, selfish world you have to beat back the people, because people generally don't agree.But that's what the state is for in Friedman's world. Enforcing property rights. If you want to eat from the fruit of my tree, screw you. Even if the apple is falling to the ground to rot, screw you. It's mine and if I want to give it to you as charity maybe I will. But I might just call the cops and have you thrown off my property. Property rights above all else, and plenty of security personnel to enforce it.

Jon Murphy writes:Where, etlxcay, is this "fredimanite limited government" you speak of that we've been living under for the past 30 years?I didn't say "friedmanite limited government." Friedmanite policies do lead to expanded government. That's not the intentions, but that's the way it goes. It's kind of like austerity in Europe. They need to slash welfare service to reduce the deficit. So they do it and what happens? The deficit goes up. Because the economy contracts further with the reduced welfare expenditures, reducing tax revenue, and driving the deficit further up.Republicans generally expand government. They talk a lot about reducing the size of government, but they do the opposite. What they really want to do is slash government WHERE IT HELPS POOR PEOPLE and expand government WHERE IT HELPS THE RICH. So that's what they do.Friedman wants reduced government services, but the people in the countries where he dominated didn't like it. What to do? You need to build torture chambers and concentration camps. That's what they did in Chile. That costs money. They had to grow the military. Friedman wanted deregulated finance. So they did that, producing speculative bubbles like what happened here in 2008. So they generated a brief euphoria, but that culminated in a collapsed banking sector which required state bail out. Government grew to where it was bigger than what it was under the Socialist, Allende. Yeah, that's the way it goes.